Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle of World War Two

During the third week of February 1944, the combined Allied air forces based in Britain and Italy launched their first round-the-clock bomber offensive against Germany. Their goal: to smash the main factories and production centers of the Luftwaffe while also drawing German planes into an aerial battle of attrition to neutralize the Luftwaffe as a fighting force prior to the cross-channel invasion, planned for a few months later. Officially called Operation ARGUMENT, this aerial offensive quickly became known as "Big Week," and it was one of the turning-point engagements of World War II. InBig Week, acclaimed World War II historian James Holland chronicles the massive air battle through the experiences of those who lived and died during it. Prior to Big Week, the air forces on both sides were in crisis. Allied raids into Germany were being decimated, but German resources--fuel and pilots--were strained to the breaking point. Ultimately new Allied aircraft--especially the American long-range P-51 Mustang--and superior tactics won out during Big Week. Through interviews, oral histories, diaries, and official records, Holland follows the fortunes of pilots, crew, and civilians on both sides, taking readers from command headquarters to fighter cockpits to anti-aircraft positions and civilian chaos on the ground, vividly recreating the campaign as it was conceived and unfolded. In the end, the six days of intense air battles largely cleared the skies of enemy aircraft when the invasion took place on June 6, 1944--D-Day.

Big Weekis both an original contribution to WWII literature and a brilliant piece of narrative history, recapturing a largely forgotten campaign that was one of the most critically important periods of the entire war.

You may be interested in

You can write a book review and share your experiences. Other readers will always be interested in your opinion of the books you've read. Whether you've loved the book or not, if you give your honest and detailed thoughts then people will find new books that are right for them.

About the Book
It was to be the battle to end the air war once and for all …
During the third week of February 1944, the combined Allied air forces launched their firstever round-the-clock bomber offensive against Germany. The aim was to smash the main factories and production centres of the Luftwaffe and at the same time draw the German fighter force up into the air and into battle. Officially called Operation ARGUMENT, this monumental air assault very quickly became known simply as Big Week.
In the six months before its launch, the bomber war was not turning out as the Allies had planned. Raids deep into Germany were falling short of their purpose and losses were severe. Air attacks needed clear skies, but the weather was atrocious. With D-Day drawing ever closer, these problems needed to be solved urgently.
Yet the Luftwaffe was also in crisis. Short of resources, fuel and properly trained pilots, the strain on those still flying was immense and the number of casualties catastrophic.
Big Week is the knife-edge story of bomber against flak gun and fighter, but also, crucially, fighter against fighter, as the stakes rose higher and higher. Following the fortunes of pilots and aircrew from both sides, this is a blistering narrative of one of the most critical periods of the entire war, one that culminated in the largest air battle ever witnessed. It is also one that has been largely forgotten, but which has been brilliantly brought back to life by award-winning historian James Holland.
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
List of Maps and Diagrams
The Aircraft
Maps
Principal Personalities
Prologue: Dogfight over Germany
Part I: Crisis
1 For the Love of Flying
2 Flying for the Reich
3 Black Thursday
4 America’s Bomber Men
5 Learning the Hard Way
6 The Defence of the Reich
7 The Nub of the Matter
8 In the Bleak Midwinter
9 Mustang
10 New Arrivals
Part II: The Turning Point
11 Fighter Boys
12 Change at the Top
13 Berlin
14 Spaatz and Doolittle Take Charge
15 Thirty Against One
16 Dicing with Death
17 Little Friends
18 Waiting for a Gap in the Weather
Part III: Big Week
19 Saturday, 19 February 1944
20 Sunday, 20 February 1944
21 Monday, 21 February 1944
22 Tuesday, 22 February 1944
23 Thursday, 24 February 1944
24 Friday, 25 February 1944
Postscript
Picture Section
Appendices
Glossary
Timeline
Notes
Selected Sources
Acknowledgements
Picture Acknowledgements
Index
About the Author
Also by James Holland
Copyright
Big Week
The Biggest Air Battle of World War II
James Holland
For James Petrie
List of Maps and Diagrams
The Aircraft: Allied Bombers, Allied Fighters and Luftwaffe Fighters
RAF Bomber Command Bases
US Eighth Air Force Bases
German Day- and Night-fighter Units
Targets and Fighter Ranges
Defence of the Reich Structure
US Combat Box Formations
Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress
P-51B Mustang
THE AIRCRAFT
ALLIED: BOMBERS
Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress
Crew: 10
[image: ]
Engines: 4 x 1,200 h.p. Wright R-1820
Wingspan: 103 ft 9 in (31.5 m)
Length: 74 ft 9 in (23 m)
Max Speed: 287 m.p.h. (462 km/h)
Cruising Speed: 180–185 m.p.h. (257 km/h)
Service Ceiling: 35,000 ft (10,668 m)
Armament: 13 x .50 (13 mm)-calibre machine guns
Bomb Load: 6,000 lb (2,724 kg)
Handley Page Halifax III
Crew: 7
[image: ]
Engines: 4 x 1,650 h.p. Bristol Hercules XVI radials or Rolls-Royce Merlin XX
Wingspan: 104 ft 2 in (31 m)
Length: 71 ft 7 in (22 m)
Max Speed: 282 m.p.h. (454 km/h)
Cruising Speed: 220 m.p.h. (354 km/h)
Service Ceiling: 24,000 ft (7,315 m)
Armament: 8 x .303 Browning machine guns
Bomb Load: 13,000 lb (5,897 kg)
Avro Lancaster
Crew: 7
[image: ]
Engines: 4 x 1,460 h.p. Rolls-Royce Merlin
Wingspan: 102 ft (31 m)
Length: 69 ft 4 in (21 m)
Max Speed: 287 m.p.h. (462 km/h)
Cruising Speed: 220 m.p.h.
Service Ceiling: 24,500 ft
Armament: 8 x .303 Browning machine guns
Bomb Load: 14,000 lb (6,350 kg) or 22,000 lb (9,979 kg with modification)
Consolidated B-24 Liberator
Crew: 10
[image: ]
Engines: 4 x 1,200 h.p. Pratt & Witney R-1830
Wingspan: 110 ft (33.5 m)
Length: 67 ft 2 in (20.4 m)
Max Speed: 290 m.p.h. (467 km/h)
Cruising Speed: 215 m.p.h. (346 km/h)
Service Ceiling: 28,000 ft (8,534 m)
Armament: 10 x .50 (13 mm)-calibre machine guns
Bomb Load: 8,000 lb (3,629 kg)
ALLIED: FIGHTERS
Lockheed P-38 Lightning
Crew: 1 Pilot
[image: ]
Engines: 2 x Allison 1,600 h.p. V-1710
Wingspan: 52 ft (15.8 m)
Length: 37 ft 10 in (11.6 m)
Max Speed: 414 m.p.h. (666 km/h)
Service Ceiling: 44,000 ft (13,411 m)
Armament: 1 x Hispano M2 .78 in (20 mm) cannon, 4 x .50 (13 mm)-calibre M2 Browning machine guns, 4 x M10 4.5-in (114 mm) rocket launchers
North American P-51B Mustang
Crew: 1 Pilot
[image: ]
Engine: Packard Merlin V-1650 (Rolls-Royce Merlin 61 under licence)
Wingspan: 37 ft 0.5 in (11.3 m)
Length: 32 ft 2.5 in (9.8 m)
Max Speed: 440 m.p.h. (708 km/h)
Service Ceiling: 41,900 ft (12,770 m)
Armament: 4 x .50 (13 mm)-calibre M2 Browning machine guns
Supermarine Spitfire Mk IX
Crew: 1 Pilot
[image: ]
Engine: Rolls-Royce 1,720 h.p. Merlin 66
Wingspan: 32 ft 6 in (9.9 m)
Length: 31 ft 1 in (9.5 m)
Max Speed: 408 m.p.h. (657 km/h)
Service Ceiling: 42,500 ft (12,954 m)
Armament: 2 x Oerlikon .78 in (20 mm) cannons and 2 x .50 (13 mm) M2 Browning machine guns
Republic P-47 Thunderbolt
Crew: 1 Pilot
[image: ]
Engine: Pratt & Witney 2,000 h.p. R-2800 radial
Wingspan: 40 ft 9 in (12.5 m)
Length: 36 ft 1 ft (11 m)
Max Speed: 433 m.p.h. (697 km/h)
Service Ceiling: 43,000 ft (13,106 m)
Armament: 8 x .50 (13 mm)-calibre M2 Browning machine guns
LUFTWAFFE: FIGHTERS
Focke-Wulf 190 A-8
Crew: 1 Pilot
[image: ]
Engine: 1 x 1,677 h.p. BMW 801 radial
Wingspan: 34 ft 5 in (10.5 m)
Length: 29 ft 5 in (9 m)
Max Speed: 408 m.p.h. (657 km/h)
Service Ceiling: 37,430 ft (11,408 m)
Armament: 2 x .50 (13 mm) MG 131 machine guns and 4 x .78 in (20 mm) MG 151 cannons
Junkers 88 G-1 Night-fighter
Crew: 3
[image: ]
Engines: 2 x 1,677 h.p. BMW 801 G-2
Wingspan: 65 ft 10 in (20 m)
Length: 50 ft 9 in (15.5 m)
Max Speed: 342 m.p.h. (550 km/h)
Service Ceiling: 32,480 ft (9,900 m)
Armament: 4 x .78 in (20 mm) MG 151 cannons, 2 x .50 (13 mm) MG 131 cannons and 1 or 2 x MG 151 Schräge Musik cannons
Messerschmitt 109G
Crew: 1 Pilot
[image: ]
Engine: Daimler-Benz DB605A-1
Wingspan: 32 ft 6 in (9.9 m)
Length: 29 ft 7 in (9 m)
Max Speed: 398 m.p.h. (640.5 km/h)
Service Ceiling: 39,370 ft (12,000 m)
Armament: 2 x .5 in (13 mm) MG 131 machine guns and 1 x .78 in (20 mm) MG 151 cannon
Messerschmitt 110F
Crew: 2 (3 for night-fighter versions)
[image: ]
Engines: 2 x 1,475 h.p. Daimler-Benz 605B
Wingspan: 53 ft 4 in (16.3 m)
Length: 40 ft 6 in (12.3 m)
Max Speed: 370 m.p.h. (595 km/h)
Service Ceiling: 36,000 ft (10,970 m)
Armament: 2 x .78 in (20 mm) MG 151 cannons & 2 x 1.2 in (30 mm) MK 108 cannons
Messerschmitt 210
Crew: 2
[image: ]
Engines: 2 x 1,332 h.p. Daimler-Benz DB601F
Wingspan: 53 ft 7 in (16.3 m)
Length: 37 ft (11.3 m)
Max Speed: 350 m.p.h. (563 km/h)
Service Ceiling: 29,200 ft (8,900 m)
Armament: 2 x .78 in (20 mm) MG 151 cannons, 2 x .3 in (7.92 mm) MG 17 machine guns and 2 x .50 (13 mm) MG131 machine guns
[image: ]
[image: ]
[image: ]
[image: ]
[image: ]
[image: ]
[image: ]
[image: ]
PRINCIPAL PERSONALITIES
(ranks at February 1944)
Americans
Lieutenant Clarence ‘Bud’ Anderson
Pilot, 363rd Fighter Squadron, 357th Fighter Group (P-51).
Major-General Frederick Anderson
Commanding officer, VIII Bomber Command, US Eighth Air Force.
General Henry ‘Hap’ Arnold
Commander-in-chief, United States Army Air Forces.
Captain Duane ‘Bee’ Beeson
Pilot, 334th Fighter Squadron, 4th Fighter Group, VIII Fighter Command, US Eighth Air Force (P-47 and P-51).
Lieutenant-Colonel Don Blakeslee
Commanding officer, 4th Fighter Group (P-47 and P-51).
Major-General Jimmy Doolittle
Commanding officer, Eighth Air Force.
Lieutenant-General Ira Eaker
Commanding officer, Eighth Air Force, then Mediterranean Allied Air Forces.
Major Francis ‘Gabby’ Gabreski
Pilot, 61st Fighter Squadron, 56th Fighter Group, VIII Fighter Command, US Eighth Air Force (P-47).
Captain Don Gentile
Pilot, 336th Fighter Squadron, 4th Fighter Group, VIII Fighter Command, US Eighth Air Force (P-47 & P-51).
Sergeant Larry ‘Goldie’ Goldstein
Radio operator, 563rd Bomb Squadron, 388th Bomb Group, VIII Bomber Command, US Eighth Air Force (B-17).
Lieutenant Bob Hughes
Pilot, 351st Bomb Squadron, 100th Bomb Group, VIII Bomber Command, US Eighth Air Force (B-17).
Lieutenant Bob Johnson
Pilot, 61st Fighter Squadron, 56th Fighter Group, VIII Fighter Command, US Eighth Air Force (P-47).
Lieutenant James Keeffe
Co-pilot, 566th Bomb Squadron, 389th Bomb Group, VIII Bomber Command, US Eighth Air Force (B-24).
Major-General Bill Kepner
Commanding officer, VIII Fighter Command, US Eighth Air Force.
Lieutenant William R. Lawley
Pilot, 364th Bomb Squadron, 305th Bomb Group, VIII Bomber Command, US Eighth Air Force (B-17).
Sergeant Hugh ‘Mac’ McGinty
Tail gunner, 524th Bomb Squadron, 379th Bomb Group, VIII Bomber Command, US Eighth AF (B-17).
Lieutenant J. Kemp McLaughlin
Pilot, 326th Bomb Squadron, 92nd Bomb Group, VIII Bomber Command, US Eighth AF (B-17).
Sergeant John Robinson
Waist gunner, 703rd Bomb Squadron, 445th Bomb Group, VIII Bomber Command, US Eighth AF (B-24).
Lieutenant-General Carl ‘Tooey’ Spaatz
Commanding officer, United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe.
Major Jimmy Stewart
703rd Bomb Squadron, 445th Bomb Group, 2nd Division, VIII Bomber Command, US Eighth AF (B-24).
Lieutenant T. Michael Sullivan
Bombardier, 429th Bomb Squadron, 2nd Bomb Group, US Fifteenth Air Force (B-17).
Lieutenant Robert ‘Sully’ Sullivan
Navigator, 32nd Bomb Squadron, 301st Bomb Group, US Fifteenth Air Force (B-17).
Captain Dick Turner
Pilot, 356th Fighter Squadron, 354th Fighter Group, VIII Fighter Command, US Eighth Air Force (P-51).
British
Squadron Leader Gordon Carter
Navigator, 35 Squadron, Pathfinder Force, RAF Bomber Command (Lancaster).
Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris
Commander-in-chief, RAF Bomber Command.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal
Chief of the Air Staff.
Flight Lieutenant Russell ‘Rusty’ Waughman
Pilot, 101 Squadron, 5 Group, RAF Bomber Command (Lancaster).
Canadian
Flight Lieutenant Bill Byers
Pilot, 429 ‘Bison’ Squadron, 6 Group, RAF Bomber Command (Halifax).
German
Margarete Dos
Red Cross nurse living and working in Berlin.
Generalmajor Adolf Galland
General der Jagdflieger.
Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring
Commander-in-chief, Luftwaffe.
Oberst Hans-Joachim ‘Hajo’ Herrmann
Inspector of Night-fighters, CO 30 Jagddivision, Wilde Sau (FW190).
Oberleutnant Wilhelm ‘Wim’ Johnen
5/Nachtjagdgeschwader 5 (Me110).
Leutnant Heinz Knoke
5/Jagdgeschwader 11 (Me109).
Feldmarschall Erhard Milch
Deputy commander, Luftwaffe.
Generalmajor Josef ‘Beppo’ Schmid
Commanding officer, 1 Jagddivision.
Prologue
Dogfight over Germany
AROUND 3.30 P.M., SUNDAY, 10 October 1943. Forty-nine P-47 Thunderbolts were speeding towards an already ferocious aerial battle. Ahead and below, more than 130 B-17 Flying Fortresses were attempting to drop bombs on the marshalling yards at Münster in north-west Germany. Over the target, puffs of flak – heavy anti-aircraft fire – were bursting all around them in dark smudges of smoke. But the bombers were strung out over around 6 miles and the tight formations of those still heading to the target were being harried and shot at by large numbers of enemy fighters, as were those that had already dropped their loads and were now turning westwards for their bases in England. Tracer from machine guns arced across the sky, and bombers were falling out of their tight formations, trailing flame and smoke, others disintegrating mid-air.
This was a long trip for the Thunderbolts, single-engine fighters that could fly this far, some 50 miles into Germany, only with the addition of auxiliary fuel tanks. These were now jettisoned, making each of the P-47s suddenly and dramatically faster and more manoeuvrable once the extra weight and cause of drag had gone. Then someone shouted, ‘Forty bandits! Seven o’clock to the bombers, same level! Shaker Three, out!’ In his Thunderbolt, Lieutenant Robert ‘Bob’ Johnson knew they had the perfect ‘bounce’ – that is, a surprise dive on the enemy with the advantage of height: at some 30,000 feet they were easily 8,000 feet above the melee and had manoeuvred across the sky so that the sun was behind them. The P-47s were being led by Major Dave Schilling of the 62nd Fighter Squadron; Johnson was part of the 61st. Each squadron flew with sixteen pilots and planes, and these two, along with the 63rd FS, made up the 56th Fighter Group. ‘Zemke’s Wolfpack’ they were known as after their brilliant group commander, Colonel Hubert ‘Hub’ Zemke. They were the leading fighter group in the US Eighth Air Force, with more enemy planes shot down than any other. Johnson was proud of that. They all were, and now it looked as if they would soon be adding to that tally.
As Schilling and the men of the 62nd FS peeled off and dived, Johnson followed, catching a glint of the sun on his wingtip as he flipped the big 7-ton ‘Jug’ over and pushed the stick forward. The needle on the air speed indicator soared, while Johnson felt himself pushed deeper back into his seat, the g-forces pulling across his skin.
For long months since arriving in England in April that year, Johnson had been a wingman, playing second fiddle and watching the back of his buddy, but now he was the lead in his pair, and Bill Grosvenor was watching his tail. A wingman was 75 per cent of a lead pilot’s eyes, Johnson reckoned. A good wingman meant the lead could get on with the job of shooting down the enemy, knowing he did not have to spend half his time protecting his own tail. Johnson realized this was about as good as he could ever hope for: the advantage of height, speed and surprise, and with someone to protect him for a change rather than the other way around.
A little way ahead, another pilot was opening fire on a Focke-Wulf 190. Smoke was already streaming from the German’s wings. Bullets – little beads of tracer – arced and spat across the sky. A second FW190, presumably a wingman, swept in, already too late to protect his leader. Johnson saw him, pressed down on the starboard rudder and with his left hand opened the throttle wider, then with his right pushed the stick slightly over so that his Thunderbolt turned towards the German fighter. He had him in his sights, but fleetingly only, because his enemy knew he was too late to save his comrade but not himself and so, flicking over, he dived earthwards.
Johnson glanced around – where the hell was Grosvenor? – and saw the sky full of turning, swirling planes. Abandoning the FW190, he pulled up and, swivelling his head frantically, could suddenly see no Thunderbolts at all but plenty of Germans. Got to hit ’em, he thought, take them off the bombers. Away to his left, a Messerschmitt 110 twin-engine fighter, with two Focke-Wulfs, all three in a long, shallow dive towards the bombers and waiting for the Me110 to get in range to fire its rockets. If those hit a bomber it was all over. A B-17 could take a hell of a beating, but it had no answer to a rocket – a 90lb projectile full of high explosive that could create a hole 30 yards wide.
Got to break them, get in there fast, Johnson told himself. A kick on the rudder pedal, open the throttle and the Thunderbolt sped towards the enemy planes, Johnson bringing his gunsight on to one of the Focke-Wulfs. Both the 190 pilots saw him and pulled their fighters up into steep climbs. To hell with them. Johnson now lined up the 110, big and increasingly filling his sights. Spotting him, the German pilot tried to evade, twisting and turning, but the two-engine Zerstörer – ‘Destroyer’ – was not agile enough and, by using the rudder, Johnson was able to press his gun button and rake the Messerschmitt from side to side. The Me110’s rear canopy disintegrated in a spray of Perspex and metal, then the navigator-gunner flung up his arms and collapsed.
There were hits all over the stricken enemy fighter. Desperately, the pilot tried to get away, then flipped the plane hard to port. Johnson slammed his foot down on the rudder, eased back the stick, then rolled, his Thunderbolt responding smoothly and cleanly like the thoroughbred she was when handled by such an experienced pilot. Now the Messerschmitt filled his sights once more. Finger on the gun button, the shudder from a short burst, and eight lines of smoking, bright tracer as the bullets of the big .50-calibre machine guns converged and tore the 110 apart. Johnson sped past, so close that his Thunderbolt shook from the violence of the explosion. Bits of debris clanged sharply against his own airframe as he hurtled through the mass of flame, smoke and obliterated enemy aircraft.
Stick back, throttle forward and a surge of power as he climbed up out of the fray to where he could see more clearly the air battle that was now raging. There was space behind him and to his right, but no sign of Bill Grosvenor. German fighters filled his view, some firing rockets towards the bombers. All around him he saw FW190s, Me109s and 110s, and the newer upgraded twin-engine Messerschmitt, the 210, and even some Junkers 88 twin-engine bombers. Repeatedly they were attacking the bomber stream, diving in and stabbing at them, swirling around the vast formation like angry wasps. Johnson watched their cannons and machine guns sparkle, then suddenly he saw a large leap of flame as another rocket was launched. There was a bigger flame in the sky too: a bomber plunging earthwards, spinning grotesquely. Parachutes blossomed – that was something – half-spheres of white against the vivid blue, the streaks of smoke and flash of flame and luminescent dots of tracer. Fighter planes everywhere, but, curiously, none seemed to have spotted Johnson in his big Jug.
Now he saw three Focke-Wulfs diving down hard towards the rear of the bombers, several thousand feet below. Johnson realized he was the only friendly fighter between them and the Flying Fortresses, so he pulled the stick to his left, put his foot down on the port rudder, flicked the Thunderbolt over and dived down like a banshee. His closing speed was over 700 m.p.h., which made it difficult to score any hits, but he hoped he could ruin their attack and protect the Fortresses.
He spotted one of the Focke-Wulfs climbing steeply and turning towards him. These boys want to fight! Johnson thought to himself. Keeping a close watch on that 190 out of the corner of his eye, he continued to dive towards the lead Focke-Wulf, convinced the German now turning towards him could not possibly hit him. He pushed the stick further forward. The speed and g-forces were immense as he dived ever more steeply: 80 degrees, 90 and then the vertical. Still he pushed the stick forward until the fighter dipped under the vertical so that he was starting to loop upside down as he readied himself to open fire on the lead 190. The angle of his dive meant he was hurtling towards the enemy plane at 90 degrees: the 190 streaking towards the bombers and he in his P-47 diving in from above. Despite the speed, his mind was clear. Carefully, he increased the lead, aiming off so that the Focke-Wulf and his bullets would converge. A squeeze of the trigger, then that familiar judder of the aircraft as the machine guns fired. White flashes peppered the 190, little stabs of orange as they struck. The cockpit shattered, then a sudden flash, an intense glare, as the fuel tanks burst and erupted into flames.
A loud crack and Johnson’s plane jarred. He felt the hit. The climbing third Focke-Wulf, guns still twinkling. A cannon shell tore into the tail of the P-47, snapping a rudder cable. The Thunderbolt rolled. A blinding flash just ahead and the lead Focke-Wulf exploded, flame and matter flung outwards. Johnson gripped the stick through the debris, but the Thunderbolt was slow to respond. Then at last the nose began to turn and the big fighter climbed once more. As the speed dropped, Johnson pushed the stick forward and regained level flight.
But no respite. Ahead, slightly to his port, a grey Me110 sped towards him, guns winking. Streaks of tracer and smoke rushed harmlessly past. Johnson kicked on the rudder – a slight yaw was all that was needed and the Me110 would be kill number three – but the rudder did not respond. No rudder! A rocket flashed towards him just above his head. Johnson ducked involuntarily, then pushed open the throttle and climbed once more until he had reached 30,000 feet and some kind of safety. Far below the air battle had shifted, slipping away, fighters still swirling around the bombers like hornets, but little dots now.
Johnson flew on, straight and level, trying to gauge just how bad his situation was. One rudder cable snapped, gaping holes in his tail and fuselage. It wasn’t good. The stricken Thunderbolt might be managing to fly now, but he knew at any moment it could easily slip out of control and into a spin, or worse, from which he would not be able to recover. That realization was enough. Pulling back the canopy, he released his belt and shoulder straps and readied himself to jump.
Wind slapped hard as he began to climb on to the seat. But he was a long way up and there below was Germany. Nazi Germany. Enemy territory. Perhaps, he thought, it would be better at least to try to reach one of the unoccupied countries. Then he remembered how a couple of months earlier one of his fellow pilots had nursed a Thunderbolt home successfully. That Jug had been in a worse state than his. Using one arm to pull the broken rudder cable, he did nothing more than gather a length of wire, but then thought of the rudder trim tabs and – yes! – they responded. It wasn’t much, but by working the stick and using his ailerons and the rudder trim he was able gradually to bring the Thunderbolt around so that he was heading west in the direction of home. He was now flying back over the air battle as it continued to drift westwards, bombers and fighters still swirling around the sky. Johnson began to feel scared; there were too many aircraft with black crosses and he was in a crippled plane that needed careful nursing home and nothing more. On the other hand, just below him and utterly oblivious of Johnson and his Thunderbolt above, was a Focke-Wulf, flying straight and level. It was hard to imagine a juicier target, ripe for the plucking. And because Johnson was just twenty-three years old and because his job was to shoot down Germans, he dropped the nose, opened the throttle and began to dive towards him.
Another Thunderbolt now dropped in front of him, cutting in on his prey, then opened fire at close range and blew the 190 out of the sky before continuing with his dive, on the lookout for other targets.
Johnson, recognizing it was time to quit while he was still just ahead, pulled back on the stick and climbed up to safety again, then began calling for help on the RT. A pilot named ‘Hydro’ Ginn responded – from the 62nd, not Johnson’s 61st Fighter Squadron, although in Zemke’s 56th Fighter Group everyone knew everyone pretty much.
‘Bob, we have you in sight,’ he heard Ginn say over his headphones.1 Johnson looked around and saw three of them heading towards him in a shallow dive.
‘Come, escort me,’ Johnson replied. ‘I got a little problem here and I don’t know when I am going to have to bail out.’
He was still flying all out. ‘Bob, for God’s sake,’ said Ginn, ‘cut that thing back.’
Doing as Ginn suggested, he pulled back on the throttle and was relieved to be joined by fellow P-47s on either side.
‘To hell with walking out,’ he told them.2 ‘I am going to fly!’
On the way home they were bounced by two German fighters. Johnson’s protectors saw them early, climbed up to meet them and the would-be attackers rolled away. Without those friends, he would have been dead meat.
At last they neared the English coast, but Johnson was still not home and dry. Over England lay a heavy cloud mass, dense, low and through which nothing could be seen. For twenty minutes they descended slowly in a wide spiral, hoping they might spot a break in the cloud. And then, as if by magic, the gap they needed appeared and below them lay their airfield. Hydro Ginn was the first to land, but Johnson’s buddy Ralph kept circling, warning the control tower to get the fire engine and ambulance ready. Now came the moment of truth: Johnson flew towards the runway, low and still at around 120 m.p.h., using the trim tabs to steady the big Thunderbolt. Suddenly the ground was rushing towards him. Easy does it! One wheel then a second hit the ground heavily, too fast, but Johnson slammed on the brakes, the port rudder cable taut in his hand.
Slowing now, and eventually the big Jug came to a halt. Power off, then Ralph Johnson’s Thunderbolt pulled up alongside, but fog was closing in. As he clambered out and jumped down from the wing, Johnson was conscious that he had had the luckiest of escapes. Then came exhilaration: two kills, which his gun cameras would soon confirm. That made five to his name in all and made him an ace – the fifth American pilot in the European theatre to achieve that coveted accolade. ‘It was,’ he noted later, ‘a great and auspicious moment for me.’3
Bob Johnson had been one of some 216 Thunderbolts dispatched in waves that day to protect the bombers. That was five fighter groups, and between them they had shot down twenty enemy aircraft for the loss of just one of their own – a good ratio. Even so, the raid had cost VIII Bomber Command another 326 casualties, of whom 306 were still missing in action. Of the fourteen Flying Fortresses from the 100th Bomb Group, for example, just one had made it back. That was a truly devastating level of losses. One hundred and twenty men from that single bomb group and one airfield alone had gone. Such casualties were not sustainable. Not sustainable at all. Men like Bob Johnson were doing a great job – they were besting the enemy when they caught up with them – but they were not protection enough. Not yet at any rate. But it was the fighters, not the bombers, that held the key: to wrest back the initiative from the Luftwaffe, they needed many more and better fighter aircraft than those of the enemy, flown by pilots with greater skill and experience and employing superior tactics, and, perhaps most important of all, with greater range.
But in the dark days and nights of the autumn of 1943, bringing these six criteria together still seemed a long way off.
[image: ]
CHAPTER 1
For the Love of Flying
BY OCTOBER 1943, Britain had been in the war for just over four years and the United States for almost two. For Britain, the war had brought a number of defeats, from the terrible shock of the collapse of France at the hands of Germany in 1940, to the catastrophic loss of Singapore, Malaya and Burma to the Japanese in early 1942. Yet there had been some notable triumphs too. The emphatic defensive victory in the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 had changed the entire course of the war, forcing Hitler to fight a long and attritional war Germany could not afford, and to turn east into the Soviet Union in June 1941 far earlier than ever originally intended. It was a gamble that had failed: the Soviet Union had not collapsed and Germany, increasingly short of vital resources, had been forced to fight a war on multiple fronts, an eventuality Hitler and his commanders had been so desperate to avoid from the outset.
Then there had been the Allied victory in the Battle of the Atlantic, which, in the circumstances of the wider war, had so far proved the most important theatre of all, for without access to the world’s sea lanes – and specifically the Atlantic because all global shipping passed through that ocean en route to Britain – neither Britain nor the United States would be able to fight Germany, nor the United Kingdom take on Japan either. Britain, quite sensibly, had poured a huge amount of effort into winning this all-important clash at sea. In terms of the number of ships being built and in vital technological advances, as well as in the strikes scored against the Kriegsmarine, the German Navy, by as early as May 1941 Britain had reached a point where she was no longer going to lose that particular battle. Two years later, in May 1943, the U-boats, the biggest threat to Allied shipping, had been emphatically defeated. This meant that not only were the sea lanes largely clear, but that the Allies could now properly plan the road to final victory because they now knew how much shipping they could expect to reach Britain safely from around the world.
Then there had also been the victory in North Africa, fought first with the successful harnessing of her Dominions and Empire – and the Free French – and later, in Tunisia, with the help of new coalition partners the United States, whose troops had landed in Northwest Africa in November 1942. Yet while America had entered the war only in December 1941 following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the USA had been helping Britain long before that. With the fall of France, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had quietly begun to ready America for war. Her tiny pre-war army began to expand, her minuscule air corps rapidly increased and became the biggest focus of the exponential growth in defence spending, and her navy vastly enlarged. Isolationism, so ingrained in 1939, gradually began to slip into the shadows as America’s burgeoning commercial home industry was turned over to armaments production. By December 1941, the USA had certainly become, as Roosevelt had pledged, an arsenal of democracy, but the journey there had begun back in the summer of 1940, eighteen months before formally entering the war. And as with Britain’s war effort, America’s journey to become the world’s leading armaments manufacturer had been a long and rocky one with plenty of lows as well as highs along the way.
Air power, however, had been central to both Britain’s and America’s military growth, and a key part of their strategy. ‘Steel not flesh’ was the mantra; both nations were determined to use modern technology and mechanization to limit the number of their young men who actually had to fight at the coalface of war. Compared with Nazi Germany or the USSR, for example, with their enormous armies and already monstrous casualty lists, this was proving a remarkably successful and efficient strategy. Air power had halted German ambitions in 1940, had helped win the Battle of the Atlantic and had saved the British Eighth Army in the summer of 1942 as it had fallen back in retreat to the Alamein line in Egypt; Allied air power had also made a massive contribution to the victory in North Africa and, more recently, to the successful conquest of Sicily. Yet in terms of the strategic air campaign against Germany – that is, the bomber war – it was only since March 1943, just half a year earlier, that the commander-in-chief of RAF Bomber Command, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, had been able to launch his all-out air assault on Germany, and only in the past couple of months, a year on from its first operations from Britain, that the US Eighth Air Force had accumulated enough bombers and fighters to make a significant contribution to this effort to bludgeon Germany from the air.
Now, though, other constraints were emerging, and not least the weather. Already, summer had become a distant memory. The days were shortening and the skies darkening with what seemed like incessant low cloud and rain. It was largely down to the weather, for example, that between 1 and 10 October 1943, the pilots of the 56th Fighter Group had flown just three operational missions.
On the other hand, such light combat flying was good news for these fighter boys and for the future prospects of VIII Fighter Command. Without question, American fighter pilots were given a far better chance of survival than any other of the world’s air combatants. They began their flying training in the wide open skies of Florida, Texas, Arizona and elsewhere – parts of the United States where the sun invariably shone, cloud cover was mostly minimal and which enabled them to begin their flying careers with a consistency and intensity that was just what was needed. It was true that Canadians, Australians, South Africans and many embryonic RAF pilots were also able to make the most of peaceful clear blue skies through training schemes in the US and in British Dominion countries, but few were sent to operational units with as many hours in their logbooks as US fighter pilots. A British fighter pilot by 1943 might have around two hundred hours’ flying by the time he joined his squadron; a US fighter pilot would have more like three hundred.
Entire fighter groups were being formed in the US and, like Bob Johnson and others, had trained and then headed overseas to England together. What’s more, a number of them had already learned to fly long before joining the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). Bob Johnson was a case in point. Born and raised in Lawton, Oklahoma, he was the son of a motor mechanic and so grew up around engines and automobiles. When he was eight, his father took him to see a travelling barnstorming team, after which he became determined to fly. By the age of eleven he was working for a cabinetmaker when not at school and saving up to learn to fly. A year later, having saved enough, he began flying lessons and, incredibly, soloed after less than six hours’ flying time. Later, while still at college, he joined the Civilian Pilot Training Program and managed to notch up over a hundred hours in his logbook before the start of his sophomore year. By the time he joined the Army Air Forces in the summer of 1941, he already had hundreds of hours under his belt. In the United States – even as it emerged from the Depression – it was possible to be the teenage son of a car mechanic and still learn to fly privately.
Once arrived in Britain, American fighter pilots had plentiful supplies of high-octane aviation fuel and, with just one operational mission every few days, plenty of time to hone their skills further. New pilots arriving to join the 56th FG, for example, were now entering an increasingly combat-experienced outfit. A rookie would arrive with a pretty good feel for his aircraft and with already decent flying skills; standards were high and it was all too easy to get washed out, as Major Francis ‘Gabby’ Gabreski, Bob Johnson’s flight commander, had discovered during his training.
The son of first-generation Polish immigrants from Oil City, Pennsylvania, Gabreski began flying lessons while at Notre Dame University, but much to his dismay, and in sharp contrast with Bob Johnson, quickly discovered he lacked any kind of natural aptitude. After around six hours’ instruction he ran out of money, but then the Army Air Corps – as it had been at the time – recruiting team turned up on campus. Aware that Poland had already been consumed by Nazi Germany and the Soviets, Gabreski decided to do his bit to help and so joined up. The trouble was, as his flying training began, he struggled to overcome his heavy-handedness and was soon put up for an elimination flight. This was his final chance to prove himself; thankfully, he managed to scrape through and was given a second chance. He was lucky, as few others were given that opportunity, and by March 1941 he had accrued more than 200 hours in his logbook.
From there he was posted to Hawaii, where he had plenty of time to increase his flying hours further. After surviving the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, life seemed a bit monotonous. It was all very well practising, but he wanted to get involved in the war, and with his Polish roots he was keen to get over to Europe to fight the Nazis. Aware of the Polish squadrons now in the RAF, he began wondering whether he might transfer to one of them and put in a request to do so.
Much to his surprise, his application was taken seriously and he was sent halfway around the world to England with instructions to report to the embryonic Eighth Air Force Headquarters at Bushy Park in south-west London. After flying the full raft of Eighth Air Force aircraft, albeit with no specific role, he finally got his transfer to 315 Polish Squadron in the RAF. Nearly two years after being awarded his wings in the US, Gabreski flew his first combat mission in January 1943. A month after that, he was posted out of the RAF and back into the USAAF, to join the 56th Fighter Group, initially based at Kings Cliffe, a satellite of RAF Wittering in Cambridgeshire. ‘Remember, my friend,’ Tadeusz Andersz, a fellow pilot at 315 Squadron told him before he left, ‘don’t shoot until you’re close enough to make a sure kill.’1
It was good advice, and when Gabreski reported for duty to Colonel Hub Zemke, the CO of the 56th, this pilot who had so nearly dropped out of training had been transformed. He still had a lot to learn about combat flying, but he had so many flying hours in his logbook, he no longer had to think too much about the actual flying part – that was pretty much second nature – and could focus on the combat element instead. What’s more, he’d been able to learn from hugely experienced pilots like Tadeusz Andersz and took that with him to the 56th.
Gabreski was assigned to the 61st Fighter Squadron and given command of ‘B’ Flight. Each fighter group had three squadrons, rather like an RAF wing or a Luftwaffe fighter Gruppe. An American squadron, however, was much larger than either the German or British equivalent, with around forty aircraft and a similar number of pilots. This was roughly four times the size of a Luftwaffe Staffel and almost double the size of an RAF squadron. Admittedly, American fighter pilots joining VIII Fighter Command were generally flying longer combat sorties than their opposite numbers, but they were still flying a fraction of the number of sorties expected of Luftwaffe pilots. Rarely would an American fighter pilot fly on operations on two consecutive days, and often only once or twice a week. As it was, the 56th FG’s pilots did not fly operationally until 13 April – in other words, a further six weeks’ training after their arrival in England. Gabreski, for one, was not even on the roster to fly that mission; only sixteen out of the forty flew – that is, two flights of eight. Nor was he assigned to fly two days later on the 56th’s next mission. He finally flew on 17 April and then a harmless ‘rodeo’ – a fighter mission using bombers as bait – to the Belgian coast. They saw nothing.
Gabreski found the slow start frustrating, but in every regard this nurturing of fighter pilots was a better deal for them than the approach of the Luftwaffe General Staff to their German counterparts. Combat flying was incredibly exhausting, both physically and mentally, so the fewer the combat missions, the fresher the pilots remained and the further their store of courage was likely to go. It also meant, of course, that there was more time to practise and hone skills, and to build up flying hours, which in turn meant their chances of survival in combat were greater.
By the autumn of 1943, Gabreski had become Bob Johnson’s squadron commander in the 61st and had two Focke-Wulf 190s shot down to his name. He was, by this time, a fine pilot and, more to the point, a highly trained and skilful fighter pilot who was able to throw his P-47 around the sky to the maximum of its capabilities and had a wealth of experience that he could pass on. He was also part of an outfit that was growing in confidence and ability, and was about as physically fit for the task in hand as was possible. This meant that when rookie pilots arrived, once in the close and convivial environment of the squadron and group, there was ample opportunity to listen and to feed off the more experienced pilots like Gabreski and Bob Johnson. They could practise dogfighting, iron out gunnery skills and build up hours in their logbooks. There was time for them to improve. Even when first made operational, they were very unlikely to be sent on a long trip. Rather, it would be a ‘milk run’ to northern France, where the chances of meeting many enemy were slight and where they could get a feel for operational life without undue risk. This gave the growing US fighter force in England an increasingly large advantage over the enemy.
Men like Bob Johnson might have arrived in England with some eight hundred hours in their logbooks, but there were also a number of American fighter pilots who had already been here in England flying and fighting the Luftwaffe long before the United States had even entered the war and who, when the Eighth Air Force was first considering how to build a fighter arm, were therefore on hand with a great deal of combat experience on which to draw – a huge asset for the new formation.
The 4th Fighter Group lived down the road from the 56th at Debden, a former RAF fighter base during the Battle of Britain. South of Cambridge, and just a few miles from the north Essex market town of Saffron Walden, it was a well-equipped base complete with distinctive RAF-style brick mess buildings, officers’ quarters, hangars, workshops and ammunition and fuel stores. Many of the men of the 4th had been based there for more than two years already, as the core of them had earlier flown for the RAF, first in squadrons throughout RAF Fighter Command and then in a wing of three ‘Eagle’ squadrons made up entirely of American pilots. It was fair to say the men of the 4th thought of themselves as a cut above any other American fighter group in the Eighth, or any other air force for that matter.
Executive officer of the 4th – that is, deputy commander – was Lieutenant-Colonel Don Blakeslee, already something of a legendary figure within VIII Fighter Command. Handsome, square-jawed and with pale blue eyes, he was a 6-foot, square-shouldered bull of a man, decidedly tribal and someone never known to beat about the bush. A superb pilot but a notoriously bad marksman, what he lacked in shooting prowess he more than made up for in his innate ability to lead others. He was gruff, bluff and never shy about swearing, but others were drawn to him and his magnetic personality that oozed confidence and self-belief.
He also loved flying and had done ever since he was a boy watching the Cleveland Air Races near where he lived at Fairport Harbor, Ohio. With money he saved from working at the Diamond Alkali Company, he and a friend bought a Piper J-3, which they flew as much as they could. In 1940, however, his friend managed to crash and write it off, and they had neither the insurance nor the funds to get another. Blakeslee didn’t want to stop flying, however, so took himself to Canada and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, having assured his mother he was being taken on as an instructor and would never go into combat.
After training in Canada, he reached England in May 1941. Although the first all-American Eagle Squadron had already been formed within RAF Fighter Command, Blakeslee was posted to 401 Squadron at Biggin Hill, to the south of London in Kent. After two hundred hours of operational flying he was told he was being taken off ops and would have a recuperative stint as an instructor. Blakeslee was not interested in that at all, so applied to join 133 Squadron, one of the Eagle squadrons, which was then based at Great Sampford, a satellite airfield to Debden in Essex.
By the summer of 1942, a number of the Eagle originals were eligible to be rotated back home to the US and that included the CO of 133, Carroll ‘Red’ McColpin. However, on an escort mission to France, their Spitfires got held up by excessively strong headwinds and eleven out of the twelve flying were lost, while the twelfth crash-landed back in England. This left a skeleton squadron, shaken to its core and with absolutely no esprit de corps; Blakeslee was charged with picking them up and leading them as their new CO. His approach, on his first evening in charge, was to forgo any speeches but instead to stand on the bar in the mess and announce that drinks were on him. ‘He was a great believer in the RAF tradition of hard drinking and high living,’ noted Jim Goodson, who joined 133 Squadron at that time and who also became a mainstay of the 4th Fighter Group, ‘and never permitting either of them to interfere with constant readiness to fly, and fly well, at any time.’2 At well after one in the morning, by which time the pilots were mostly semi-conscious, Blakeslee announced they all needed to be ready to fly at 6 a.m.
It was usual for fighter planes to take off in pairs or, at a push, in fours, but that next morning Blakeslee ordered them to take off together – all sixteen of them – in formation. After the spontaneous gasp of horror, Blakeslee yelled at them to move and they all headed out to their waiting Spitfires. And somehow, they all managed to do exactly as he had demanded. ‘Tighten up!’ yelled Blakeslee.3 ‘Let’s show these bastards!’
The bastards in question were the other Eagle squadrons at nearby Debden, and sure enough, before most of the 133 Squadron pilots had had a chance to think too much about what was happening, they were flying in perfect formation at 500 feet. And right over Debden. By the time they landed, everyone was talking excitedly, with a palpable, breathless pride. ‘That evening,’ added Goodson, ‘Blakeslee wasn’t the only 133 pilot with the belligerent swagger.’4
Soon after, the Eagle squadrons were transferred into the US Army Air Forces – specifically the Eighth – and were given new squadron numbers: 133 Squadron became 336th Fighter Squadron in the newly formed 4th Fighter Group, and the old RAF rondels were scrubbed out and repainted with USAAF stars.
Blakeslee had been happy to keep his Spitfires and was none too amused when, the following April, he was told they would be re-equipping with P-47 Thunderbolts. On 15 April 1943, he was leading the squadron on a ‘ramrod’ – fighter escort for a bombing mission – over Belgium when they spotted a couple of FW190s. The German pilots dived out of the way and the squadron followed from a height of around 20,000 feet. By the time Blakeslee pulled out and blew one of the Focke-Wulfs to pieces, he was at just 500 feet and almost flying into Ostend. It was, however, the first recorded victory ever in a P-47 and it was entirely appropriate that this victory had been achieved by a 4th Fighter Group pilot and by Blakeslee in particular.
Back at base, Goodson, who before the mission had tried to persuade Blakeslee of its virtues, said to him, ‘I told you the Jug could out-dive them!’5
‘Well, it damn well ought to be able to dive,’ Blakeslee growled, ‘it sure as hell can’t climb.’
Not long after, Blakeslee was made excutive officer of the entire Fighter Group, although only on the condition he could keep flying – and that meant combat flying. ‘We love fighting,’ he once said.6 ‘Fighting is a grand sport.’ He continued to love drinking too. When the mess secretary complained that the pilots were smashing too many glasses, Blakeslee replied, ‘Good show. Shows their spirit.’
Although Blakeslee’s personal score was gradually mounting, he never painted swastikas on his fighter plane like most others, nor did he get much better at shooting. ‘Hell, I can’t hit the side of a barn,’ he told a reporter. ‘There’s no sport in it for a guy who can shoot straight. The sport comes when somebody like me has to pull up behind ’em and start shooting to find out where the bullets are going.’ In a dogfight, he was everywhere – twisting, climbing, rolling, bellowing and blinding. Blakeslee swore like a trooper. But first with the 336th FS and then with the 4th Fighter Group, he was venerated as a fighting air leader par excellence – so much so that by the autumn of 1943 his fame had spread throughout the Eighth Air Force.
In many ways, Blakeslee was the embodiment of the spirit of the 4th, but he was far from unique in possessing an obsessive love of flying combined with stubborn single-mindedness and an unshakeable thirst for adventure. Being both single-minded and stubbornly determined were also most certainly attributes that could be applied to Captain Duane ‘Bee’ Beeson. From Boise, Idaho, 22-year-old Beeson had decided to become a lawyer and so had sold magazines and newspapers until he had saved up enough money to hitch-hike to Oakland, California, where he took a job as a hotel clerk while attending law classes. Then came the war and he decided to forgo a legal career to become a pilot instead and do his bit in the fight against Nazi Germany. Since there was no opportunity for him to join the US Army Air Corps at this time, he, like Blakeslee, went to Canada and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force instead.
Beeson was a young man with a fastidious attention to detail and, if he was going to do something, he did it properly. He regarded flying as something of a science, applied himself to the task in hand with zeal and, as had been his intention from the outset, by the summer of 1942 he was in England and a fighter pilot in the RAF. ‘In the RAF,’ wrote the 4th’s public relations officer, ‘he was always spoiling to go out and kill Germans, having picked up an unaccountable Hun phobia somewhere along the line.’7
Beeson had barely joined the Eagle squadrons before they were transferred to the Eighth and became the 4th Fighter Group. From the outset, he applied himself to getting ever better as a fighter pilot. At Debden, he built his own gunnery gadget to help him practise deflection shooting – aiming ahead so that his bullets and an enemy plane would converge. Very few pilots mastered this, but those who did had a massive edge because it allowed them to attack at an angle rather than just from directly behind. Beeson, who was a small, slight fellow with the face of a boy younger than his twenty-two years, also made a point of carefully studying the legendary fighter pilots who had gone before and working hard to put theory into practice. It was perhaps not surprising, then, that on 8 October 1943 he became the group’s first ace when he shot down two Me109s to bring his score to six.
Don Gentile, on the other hand, was another who was utterly obsessed with flying and who had, like Bob Johnson, decided at a very early age that it was going to become his life. ‘I can’t remember the time when airplanes were not part of my life,’ he said, ‘and can’t remember ever wanting anything so much as to fly one.8 Once I had started I had to keep flying.’ From Piqua, Ohio, Gentile – known to his pals in the group as ‘Gentle’ – was the son of Italian immigrants; he had a lean face and dark, decidedly Italian good looks. As a boy, he assiduously saved up for flying lessons and then, having earned some more by working as a waiter at his father’s club, he bought – without his parents’ authority – a beaten-up old plane for $300. Someone – Gentile never found out who – rang his mother and said, ‘Your son bought himself a death trap.’9 So it proved when the plane was checked over, but by then it was too late: the purchase had been made. ‘Okay,’ Gentile’s father told him, ‘You’ve learned a lesson.10 You’ve got $300 worth of experience now.’ Gentile eventually wore down his parents, however, and when he was seventeen his father bought him a $450 Aerosport biplane.
Gentile was a naturally gifted pilot, but like many teenagers he believed himself immortal and developed an unhealthy lust for speed. That biplane got him into a lot of trouble, because he liked nothing more than flying low over the town, the church, the school and buzzing the people below. He was still at high school when Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939 and immediately he realized it was a war that he had to get into as a pilot. His parents wanted him to go to Ohio State University on a football scholarship – he’d never paid much attention to his academic subjects – and a university education would have helped him get into the Army Air Corps. Gentile, however, had learned that the RAF was taking young American pilots like himself, so he joined up, trained in Canada, got his wings with an ‘above average’ qualification, then shipped to England to join 133 Eagle Squadron.
On joining the Eagles, Gentile quickly realized how much he still had to learn. ‘Flying an airplane is only a part of fighting with one,’ he said, ‘and most of the other part a man has to learn from his fellow soldiers, and from the enemy.’11 That was certainly true. He soon understood he had been very fortunate to reach the front line at a time when there was comparatively little operational flying and so was able to learn the ropes steadily and from others who already had a great deal of experience. His first few operational sorties were bewildering, but he learned, and slowly but surely his confidence grew. On 19 August 1942, during the air battle over the ill-fated Dieppe Raid, he had shot down first a Ju88 and then a Focke-Wulf. He also discovered he had superb twenty-ten vision. ‘Twenty-twenty is perfect,’ he said, ‘but twenty-ten is better than perfect … that half-second or one-second advantage it gives you over your enemy in picking the black speck of him out of a scud in the sky or the flecked-up greys, blues or blinding, bleached-out yellow is the difference, other things being equal, between killing or being killed.’12
By October 1943, Captain Don Gentile was a flight commander in the 336th Fighter Squadron and had some fifteen months of operational flying under his belt. Many of the 4th’s pilots were similarly experienced, yet Gentile knew he was still not the finished article and had much still to learn. He had become a flight commander only at the end of September when the previous commander, Captain Spike Miley, had finished his tour and headed home. Before he left, Miley had taken Gentile to one side and said, ‘All right, you’re red hot and it’s natural you should want to be a fire-cracker over here.13 But you’ve got boys following you now who have things to learn before they get red hot. They’re going to follow you wherever you take them. Remember that whenever you take them anywhere. It’s not only your brains that are going to get knocked out, but the brains of the kids who are depending on you.’ It was good advice, and Gentile knew it. He was determined he was going to look after the men in his charge and help them develop.
By the autumn of 1943, VIII Fighter Command was turning itself into a very impressive organization. It had highly motivated pilots of increasing skill and experience, and fine aircraft with which to fight. The weeks ahead promised them an opportunity to hone their skills yet further. In fact, the only missing ingredient was an aircraft that could take them deep into enemy territory. Although the pilots and aircrew knew little about new technological developments, the powers that be were working on it. When that conundrum was successfully resolved, VIII Fighter Command was going to prove itself a truly formidable outfit.
CHAPTER 2
Flying for the Reich
IN SHARP CONTRAST to the Americans, the Luftwaffe’s fighter arm was increasingly short of training, fuel and even aircraft that could keep pace with the Allies’ latest fighters. Like all aspects of Germany’s war effort, the air force was feeling the pinch, and badly so. No part of the Wehrmacht – the German Armed Forces – had been so overused and, frankly, under-appreciated. The Luftwaffe had come into being in 1935 and had emerged as a symbol of the new military dynamism of the Third Reich, with glistening new fighter aircraft, bombers and dive-bombers. Its pilots were Nazi pin-ups and during the early years of the war the Luftwaffe had led the way: screaming Stuka dive-bombers and lithe, feline, deadly Messerschmitt 109s had been among the primary symbols of the so-called Blitzkrieg, bringing a new brand of shock and awe as they swept over their enemies.
The Luftwaffe had been expected to continue this dominance and crush the RAF in the summer of 1940, then hammer British cities throughout that winter and the spring of 1941. It also had to spearhead the attacks on Malta, in the Balkans, against Greece and then against the Soviet Union. There had been no let-up. More and more was expected of the pilots and aircrew, with no defined regulations about tours of duty or even regular rest of any kind. Meanwhile, production of aircraft, despite Germany’s head start over other nations in the 1930s, had slowed and then become mired in bureaucracy and the hubris of many of the leading designers and manufacturers. The air force had also been forced to play second fiddle to the army when it came to allocations, while when things went wrong, as had been happening for the past two years, the Luftwaffe had often received the blame. The blazing spearhead had become the scapegoat.
Up until the summer of 1943, the Luftwaffe had maintained its presence over the front line wherever its ground forces were in action, which in the summer months of that year had been the Eastern Front and the Mediterranean. In early July, the army had launched Operation ZITADELLE to close off the Kursk salient in the Soviet Union, but even before that battle began, many of the air forces had already been transferred to the Mediterranean. The Eastern Front might have been where the bulk of the army’s divisions were fighting, but it was the Mediterranean where much of the Luftwaffe was operating. This had been catastrophic for them. Between June and September, the Luftwaffe had lost 704 aircraft over the Eastern Front but a staggering 3,502 in the Mediterranean, most of them in a vain effort to save Sicily and keep Italy in the war. This kind of effort simply could not be maintained and with RAF Bomber Command attacking German cities by night, and now with the American heavy bomber force increasingly attacking by day, the focus for the Luftwaffe had to be the defence of the Reich.
At this stage of the war there was absolutely no doubt about the outcome. This had been clear to the Allies back in January 1943 when the American and British Chiefs of Staff as well as President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister, had met at Casablanca to plan for victory in Europe. At the time, the Germans were suffering a terrible reverse on the Eastern Front, while it was expected the British and Americans would secure all of North Africa by May, in what was their first joint land campaign since the USA’s entry into the war.
So far, 1943 had proved the optimism of Casablanca had not been misplaced. In February, at Stalingrad on the Eastern Front, the German Sixth Army had been surrounded and annihilated, a defeat that had prompted deep shock at home. Twenty months after Hitler’s great gamble to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941, its failure had been dramatically laid bare. Then, in May, as predicted at Casablanca, the joint German–Italian forces in North Africa had been forced to surrender with the loss of even more men than at Stalingrad and considerably more aircraft, tanks and other materiel. That had been swiftly followed by ZITADELLE and the Germans’ last counter-attack in the east; a few days later had come the invasion of Sicily – the first Allied land attack on European soil – and by mid-August the island had fallen. By the end of July Hitler’s fellow dictator and ally, Benito Mussolini, had been overthrown. On 8 September, Italy signed an armistice and the following day Allied forces landed at Salerno, just south of Naples.
Germany simply could not compete with the industrial output, technological advances and vast global reach of the Allies, nor with the immense reserves of manpower and burgeoning war industry of the Soviet Union. By the autumn of 1943, Germany was short of just about everything, but especially of manpower, food and oil, the three requirements needed above anything else for a long attritional war.
The Nazi leadership continued to cling to the belief that wonder weapons would come to their rescue, but this was a vain hope; their atomic programme, such as it was, had been taken off any priority list and, in any case, was riven by the kind of rivalries and splintering of effort that was all too common within the Third Reich. Instead, hope rested with their missile programme – the V1 and V2, both currently still in development – with new-generation submarines and advances in airframes and jet power. The V1s and V2s, although brilliant technological breakthroughs, lacked any kind of accuracy, while the Type XXI U-boats had been developed far too late to be decisive. Finally, new jet engines had been hurried and were not as good or advanced as those now being developed in Britain. In other words, despite the fantasies of Hitler, none of these developments had the slightest chance of turning the war in the favour of the Germans.
However, Hitler’s expectations for the Luftwaffe remained enormously high. German aircraft production – and that of fighters especially – might have been on the rise, but there could be no escaping other shortages and, of those, fuel was the one that was hurting the Luftwaffe the most. There was simply not enough of that precious fluid for training or even for practising. Training was being cut and pilots were being sent to front-line units with only 150 hours or fewer in their logbooks – around half the hours of an American. Even once attached to an operational unit there was little opportunity for pilots to build up their skill levels or add hours to the logbooks outside operational flights.
Luftwaffe fighter pilots were expected to operate at an intensity that was utterly unsustainable. They would often be required to take off, meet the enemy, land back down, then, after refuelling and rearming, take to the skies again. There was no 24-hour pass each week and 48-hour pass every three weeks as there had been in RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain. German fighter pilots were expected to keep flying. On and on, relentlessly. More often than not, the only way out of this cycle of endless operational flying was by getting shot down and wounded or, more likely, by being killed.
This rather undermined the inherent advantage of flying over home soil, where the distances flown tended to be less and where if a pilot was shot down and bailed out safely, he could return to the action right away. Furthermore, because German fighter pilots did not know when they would be attacked, they had to be on standby all the time, which, in turn, meant there were fewer opportunities for practice. American and British fighter pilots, in contrast, with their plentiful supplies of fuel and aircraft could practise pretty much whenever they liked, weather permitting.
Unsurprisingly, the rate of attrition in Luftwaffe squadrons was horrendous, and not just in new pilots. The Luftwaffe were treating their prized asset – the pilots – with the same lack of due care that both the Luftstreitkräfte and Royal Flying Corps had demonstrated in the First World War. It hadn’t done either side much good then and it wasn’t doing the Luftwaffe any favours now. But it could not be helped – not unless Germany brought the war to a swift end. Every nation is always bound to defend its homeland above all, and with Allied bombers pounding Germany’s cities there was an imperative that the Luftwaffe meet this threat as forcefully as they possibly could.
One of those flying almost daily in defence of the Reich was Leutnant Heinz Knoke, just twenty-two years old and an ace nearly four times over, with nineteen confirmed enemy aircraft shot down. Like the Pied Piper, he was from Hamelin, a small country town lying underneath much of the air battle that raged in the skies. Knoke had begun the war full of patriotic zeal and admiration for the Führer. When still only seventeen, he had gone for a pleasure flight at a public air display and there and then had determined to become a pilot. During the last, long summer before the war he had applied to join the Luftwaffe and had been accepted; a year later, in August 1940, as the Battle of Britain raged, he had finally been awarded his wings and been posted to fighters. More training followed; in those far-off, heady days the Luftwaffe still had the luxury of training its pilots properly without cutting corners, so not until just before Christmas 1940 was Knoke finally posted to his operational unit, Jagdgeschwader – Fighter Wing – 52.
More than two and a half years later he was still combat flying and now a hardened veteran. He was married too – young men like Knoke were old beyond their years; a boyish pilot grew up fast and, as for many in wartime, with the future so uncertain it paid to take the chance of love and happiness while he could. In his case, he had been taking cover in an air-raid shelter in Berlin on a brief foray into town while stationed at Döberitz, just outside the city. After giving up his seat to a ‘strikingly attractive’ girl, he had struck up a conversation. She was called Lilo and to begin with she had been reserved and even cool, but eventually his perseverance had paid off. On 24 March 1941, his twentieth birthday, he had asked her to marry him.
This would not have pleased the Luftwaffe’s General der Jagdflieger – General of Fighters – Adolf Galland, who took a dim view of his pilots getting married. He was happy for them to sleep around and sow their wild oats, but he thought it a mistake to allow them to settle down; he wanted them thinking about flying, not worrying about wives back at home. ‘Better wait until the war is over,’ was the response of Leutnant Öhlschläger, Knoke’s senior squadron officer, echoing Galland’s sentiments.1
‘But the war may drag on for thirty years,’ Knoke confided in his diary. ‘In any case, I do not want to wait so long before learning all about love.’ Galland, who had never been shy with the ladies, would have argued that the one did not at all depend upon the other, but Knoke was of a more traditional nature. Promising they would be wed as soon as he was able, he and Lilo were parted in May that year when Knoke was posted first to France and then, in June, to the Eastern Front for the invasion of the Soviet Union. A couple of months later he was posted west once more and granted both a brief leave and permission to marry his Lilo. A short registry office ceremony on 28 August was the best they could manage. The following day he was back with his squadron and flying once more.
Over the next two years this still extremely young man had continued flying. Relentlessly, come rain, come shine. During this excessively prolonged stint of front-line combat flying, he had developed the technique of dropping a single bomb on top of American bomber formations – literally, a hit-or-miss technique – which had prompted a personal call from Reichsmarschall Göring himself. He had also been given responsibility for training new NCO pilots arriving to join the fighter group and then had been placed in command of his own Staffel. He had lost his best friend and fellow pilot, Dieter Gerhard, and many other comrades beside, and had had more close shaves of his own than he cared to remember. Youthful exuberance had given way to weary resignation. Skill and experience helped a great deal, but Knoke had learned to accept that luck played a huge part. Ultimately, it was a numbers game in which the more one flew, the greater the chance one’s luck would run out.
He had thought it had done so on 17 August 1943, when the US Eighth Air Force’s bombers first hit the ball-bearing plant at Schweinfurt, some 100 miles east of Frankfurt and deep inside Germany. The Americans had lost sixty aircraft on that mission alone, but the Luftwaffe fighter force had suffered too. That day, and now flying with 5/JG11, Knoke had shot a Fortress down in flames, but had been hit in turn. His engine had been set alight, but he had managed to put out the fire and had been on the point of bailing out when instead he had decided to try to nurse his stricken aircraft back to base. He had crash-landed at 100 m.p.h., smashed through three wooden fences, bounced into the air, then finally come to a halt. Apart from light shrapnel wounds to his upper right arm, he had survived intact. A miracle.
Not quite six weeks later, on 27 September, he had been shot up again. On standby at 10.30 a.m., fifteen minutes later he had been checking over his brand-new ‘Gustav’ – a Messerschmitt 109G that had been polished up to brilliance by his ground crew. Ten minutes after that, the squadron had been scrambled and he was off, albeit sluggishly, as they had all been equipped with auxiliary fuel tanks and rockets under the wings, and the extra weight and drag held them back.
At 10,000 feet they had emerged out of the cloud base and spotted the Fortresses on a parallel course above them. Climbing to 20,000 feet, the Staffel had jettisoned their drop tanks – external fuel tanks – on Knoke’s orders, then dived down and head-on as the bomber formation began to split. At 2,000 feet distance, Knoke had fired his rockets and been amazed to see the warheads register a direct hit on a Fortress. The bomber exploded in a giant ball of flame; Knoke had never seen anything like it. Bits of debris began fluttering downwards as he flew on, climbing out of the fray and spotting first some twin-engine P-38 Lightnings and then some Thunderbolts. Cursing, and diving down towards them, he had then seen a lone Fortress with an equally lone Me109 on its tail, which he recognized as his friend and wingman Obergefreiter Peter Reinhard’s plane. Behind Reinhard, though, were some Thunderbolts. Warning his wingman to wake up, Knoke had hurtled after the Thunderbolts, opened fire on the nearest and saw that one of them had burst into flames too – his second kill of the day. Then suddenly three more Thunderbolts were on his tail. Pushing forward on the stick, he had dived for the cloud, but it was too late: his engine was on fire once again. This time, though, there could be no nursing it back. Pushing back the canopy, he had unclipped his leads, kicked the stick forward and dropped out in a great somersault, then remembered to pull the ripcord.
A moment later, the harness had cut into his shoulders and he jolted as the billowing parachute put the brakes on his descent. He felt as though he were standing on air and, as he drifted down, the air swooshing in the great white awning above, he had found himself rather enjoying the experience and marvelling at what a wonderful invention the parachute was. He touched down at 11.26 a.m., only thirty-one minutes after taking off.
Since he had come down not far from Jever, on the North Sea coast just to the west of Wilhelmshaven, where he was now based, he had soon been back at the airfield and facing the disappointment of his ground crew over losing the new plane. Worse news followed, however. In Knoke’s squadron alone – only nine men strong that morning – Unteroffizier Rudolf Dölling had been killed and two more shot down, one of whom, Jonny Fest, had been wounded. The fourth Staffel had also lost two killed and one badly wounded, while the 5/JG11 had lost nine out of twelve, all killed, and the remaining three crash-landed or bailed out. ‘The heavy casualties on our side,’ Knoke noted, ‘are to be explained by the fact that nobody had anticipated an encounter with the enemy fighters. We were taken completely by surprise.’ It was a clear demonstration of what the Allies could achieve when their bombers were supported by modern fighters in plentiful numbers – on this occasion some 262 Thunderbolts had been dispatched, including fifty-one from the 56th Fighter Group.
Knoke might have wondered how he had managed to stay alive when so many of his colleagues had not, but he was to test his luck still further just a couple of weeks later. On Monday, 4 October, the Eighth Air Force launched a major strike into Germany to hit targets around Frankfurt and Saarbrücken. The weather was good over central Germany that day, so Knoke sensed they would soon be in action. Sitting by the hangars that morning, he had been cursing the amount of paperwork he was expected to do and listening to music over the loudspeaker, when suddenly the music faded and a voice called out, ‘Attention all squadrons! Attention all squadrons! Stand by for take-off!’2 Mechanics began running towards the aircraft, the pilots following. Up on to the wing, then hoisting himself into the cockpit, with its low-slung bucket seat. Safety harness on, manual checks, canopy hanging open to one side on its hinges. Unteroffizier Alfred Arndt, his ground chief, passed Knoke the ground telephone extension. Hauptmann Sprecht was on the line. The Americans were approaching over the North Sea coast. Knoke and the rest of the group were to make a frontal attack in close formation. Just after 9.30 a.m., one Staffel after another took off, then wheeled to the left until all were airborne and they could begin their climb together.
At 22,000 feet Knoke noticed the contrails from their aircraft and saw his breath freeze on the oxygen mask he wore; he had to slap his legs to keep himself warm. Soon after, they spotted the enemy bombers. As many as four hundred, Knoke reckoned. The Jagdgeschwader now turned towards the American planes and a few minutes later they were tearing into them, flying head-on, guns blazing and tracer arcing across the sky. Knoke aimed for a B-24 Liberator, opened fire when he had come as close as he dared, then involuntarily ducked as he sped past, beneath the nose and right through the formation, before pulling back on the stick and climbing up in a left-hand turn. Watching his Liberator, he saw it pull away from the rest of the formation, exposing itself. Knoke turned towards it, flying beneath it, then pulling back and letting rip at its belly. Moments later it was gushing flames and eight men jumped, parachutes mushrooming. He now drew up alongside, less than 100 feet away, and saw the great holes torn by his cannons. Then suddenly the dorsal turret flashed and bullets were hitting him. Knoke could scarcely believe it – how could anyone still be alive in that burning crate? And yet someone was, and now his own aircraft was on fire.
Once again, he had to bail out, dropping clear of the stricken Messerschmitt, his parachute blossoming. Below were several others. ‘This is one time,’ he noted later, ‘the Americans and I go bathing together.’3 Hitting the water, he was stunned by how cold it was and, after releasing his harness, he was immediately hit by a wave that knocked him backwards and left him gasping. Fortunately, he was able both to inflate his life jacket and grab his half-inflated dinghy and scramble into it, despite the swell. Catching his breath, he emptied his packet of dye and watched it spread across the water around him creating a patch of yellowish-green. Much of the North Sea was dominated and controlled by the Royal Navy, but fortunately he had come down in German waters and fairly near the coast.
Certain that his comrades had seen him float down, Knoke was confident he would be rescued, and so he was. Not long after, a Focke-Wulf seaplane flew over. He waved like mad and saw the crew circle low, then wave and drop a larger, more sturdy rubber dinghy. It was no easy matter either reaching it or clambering from one to the other, especially with the relentless waves crashing around him, but eventually he made it, slumping down in exhaustion. For perhaps two hours more, he lay there, bobbing up and down on the swell, until finally a launch approached and he was pulled aboard. He had survived yet again.
Those first ten days of October saw three big raids deep into Germany by the Eighth Air Force. On the 8th, their target was Bremen. Inevitably, Knoke was in action that day too, only four days after being rescued from the North Sea, and managed to shoot down a Fortress without harm to his own aircraft. Two days later, on Sunday, 10 October – the same day that Bob Johnson became the fifth pilot in the Mighty Eighth to become an ace – Knoke was in action yet again. ‘The Yanks do not leave us alone,’ he scribbled in his diary.4 ‘Today they attack Münster in strength.’ Knoke and his Staffel were about to dive down on the Fortresses when they were attacked by Thunderbolts, very possibly including those of the 56th Fighter Group. He was soon caught up in a swirling dogfight, but then spotted an Me110 fire four rockets, two of which hit the enemy bombers. As they exploded, several Thunderbolts tore after the Me110. Knoke, along with Barran and Führmann from his Staffel, went after the Thunderbolts. Knoke opened fire at close range and saw one of the American fighters blow up, while Führmann shot down a second. Suddenly, an entire pack of P-47s descended on them; in rapid succession, the attacker became the attacked. ‘It is all we can do to shake them off,’ Knoke recorded later.5 ‘I try every trick I know, and put on quite a display of aerobatics.’ Eventually he managed to escape by executing a corkscrew climb, a trick he knew the Thunderbolt could not perform as well.
Knoke might have been safe, but he could see that Barran and Führmann were not, with as many as a dozen Thunderbolts still on their tails. Choosing what he hoped was the best moment, he dived down again, shooting wildly to distract the enemy, but was hit badly across the tail and left wing. Flipping over, the Messerschmitt began diving downwards out of control. On his dashboard, the altimeter circled backwards. Desperately, Knoke tried to bring it under control. Breaking out into a cold sweat, he thought this time he really was done for. At just 3,000 feet off the ground, the stick was still jammed stuck. He now took his feet off the rudder pedals, pushed hard against the stick and at last felt a violent jolt, knocking his head hard, and as if by magic the Gustav was suddenly flying straight and level.
The nearest airfield was Twente in Holland and so, nursing his plane carefully, he swooped in low, only to discover one of his undercarriage wheels had been destroyed. That meant a belly-land. With a grinding and screeching of metal, he hit the deck, sliding and slewing to a halt. Miraculously, he was still in one piece. Clambering out, he saw half his tail plane had been shot away.
Soon after, a crippled Focke-Wulf came in, also with a broken undercarriage, but this time the pilot tried landing on one wheel. It didn’t work. The fighter overturned and burst into flames. The pilot, trapped in the cockpit, was burned to death right in front of Knoke. ‘I am powerless to help,’ he wrote later.6 ‘I have to watch him being slowly cremated alive in the wreck. I am trembling at the knees.’ A few minutes later, several heavy bombers flew over and pasted the airfield with bombs.
Taking cover, Knoke felt he had had more than enough for one day.
No matter how desperate the situation may have seemed to Heinz Knoke, and regardless of how short they were of fuel, well-trained new pilots and other vital resources, the Luftwaffe remained a highly dangerous and potent force and a major thorn in the Allies’ side. The issue for the Allies in late 1943 was no longer the outcome of the war against Nazi Germany but, rather, the time it would take to achieve total victory over an enemy whose leadership still had complete control over its people and seemed determined to keep fighting for as long as humanly possible. A generation earlier, Germany had ended the First World War because it had reached a point where it had run out of money and resources and could no longer win. Those conditions had long been reached by Nazi Germany – even as early as November 1941, when Operation BARBAROSSA, the invasion of the Soviet Union, had unravelled with Germany still a long way from victory – but Hitler had always viewed the future of the Third Reich as being one of two dramatically opposite outcomes: the war would lead either to a thousand-year Reich or to Armageddon. Armageddon had not yet been reached by the second half of 1943; so long as Hitler remained in power, Germany would continue fighting until the bitter end.
From the Allies’ perspective, the aim was a swift end with minimum casualties, but how to achieve that was a matter of debate. Central to the Anglo-American strategy was a cross-Channel invasion of the continent. Immediately after the United States had entered the war in December 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the US Chiefs of Staff had confirmed an earlier agreement with the British that destroying Nazi Germany would be the first priority, above the defeat of Imperial Japan. The re-invasion of Europe had been the cornerstone of that joint strategy, and especially that of the Americans.
What followed had been the start of preparations for that cross-Channel attack, with the build-up in Britain not only of American troops but also of air forces. The Eighth Air Force had been formed in July 1942 and its first daylight bombing raid had taken place in August that year. Some still believed, a year on, that Nazi Germany could be brought to its knees by air power alone – General Carl ‘Tooey’ Spaatz, the first commander of the Eighth Air Force, for one, and Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, commander of RAF Bomber Command, for another. These men, passionate believers in the efficacy of air power, were, however, in a minority, and both the American and British war leaders accepted that the war could be won only by putting boots on the ground. Operation OVERLORD, as the Allied cross-Channel invasion had been code-named, was planned for May 1944 – that is, in seven months’ time. By then, they had to be ready. Any longer, and the war could easily drag on and on, with the deaths of yet more of their countries’ young men. On the other hand, to launch OVERLORD and for it to fail was unthinkable.
The Allied leadership might doubt that air power alone could win the war, but all accepted it held the key to a successful re-invasion of the continent. Control over the skies – not just of the immediate invasion area but of much of France and northern Europe – was an absolute prerequisite. To achieve that, the Luftwaffe had to be defeated first, or, at the very least, considerably reduced and driven deep into Germany, away from the skies over western Europe. The problem was, for all the growth of the Allied air forces by the autumn of 1943, and for all the many troubles facing Germany, the defeat of the Luftwaffe was still a long way off.
CHAPTER 3
Black Thursday
THURSDAY, 14 OCTOBER 1943. Another cold, damp and hazy morning at Thorpe Abbotts, a village lying a few miles east of the quiet country town of Diss in Norfolk and home to the 100th Bomb Group. The airfield had been laid down the previous year on requisitioned farmland and brought up to heavy bomber standard with the construction of three concrete runways laid out like a giant ‘A’, with the long main runway running west–east. The mass of fighter and bomber airfields in England needed to be as close to the continent as possible. What a huge advantage it was that, by a quirk of geography, the flattest part of this otherwise largely hilly and mountainous island should be in the east of the country.
Although the control tower at Thorpe Abbotts stood two-thirds of the way along on the northern side, the main base was to the south. Anyone entering the control tower could easily have been deceived about this, however, because although the airfield and runways were big enough, in terms of acreage they accounted for only about half the space of the entire base. To the south, hidden by Billingford and Thorpe Woods, a large village had emerged – one made up of rows of Nissen huts, looking like long cylindrical tubes of corrugated iron sliced down the middle. There were also hastily constructed brick buildings – two messes, one for officers and one for other ranks, as well as headquarters buildings, sick quarters and ammunition dumps. Newly metalled roads had been built, sometimes on old farm lanes and others completely new. The hamlet of Upper Street had been transformed and dwarfed. The speed of the development had been extraordinary: just over a year earlier, this had been a quiet, peaceful rural community, but now it was a large American heavy bomber base of thousands. Like all these hastily built airfields – thirty-nine were currently occupied by the Eighth Air Force, with more to follow – it had no perimeter fence of razor wire. For local schoolboys from the nearby villages of Thorpe Abbotts, Dickleburgh and Thelveton, their proximity to the base could hardly be more thrilling. Watching these giants fly off or land back down again was exciting, but the place was also full of friendly Americans, who, more often than not, were only too willing to share their supplies of chocolate, chewing gum and other luxuries rare to the average British schoolchild during the war.
A palpable sense of gloom had settled over Thorpe Abbotts this October week, however. Around the perimeter of the airfield itself, most of the standing B-17 Flying Fortresses showed battle damage. Some had a row of bullet holes, others had huge tears and gaping rents. One Fortress had an entire wing shredded, while two others had whole engines ripped off. These B-17s had witnessed and somehow survived an intense battle in the skies.
In fact, the Hundredth had been in three consecutive days of battle, the last of which, the mission to Münster on the 10th, had been the worst. Already badly depleted after operations on the 8th and 9th, the Hundredth had been able to put up only thirteen Forts. Just one had returned, and that against the odds with two engines missing. In these three operations, the group had lost almost one hundred men. Four months earlier, it had reached England with 140 officers; now only three of those were still fit to fly. In the past fortnight, two squadron commanders had gone, four lead crews and three operations officers. The Hundredth had been decimated.
Now, in the early dawn of this Thursday in the middle of October, the Hundredth was preparing for yet another mission, the fourth in a week and a particularly difficult one: Schweinfurt, far into central Germany. The city had been identified as important by the American Committee of Operation Analysts (COA), which had been set up by General Henry ‘Hap’ Arnold, the commander-in-chief of the United States Army Air Forces, late the previous year. The COA had made their first report back in March and had recommended enemy fighter aircraft production as their number-one target priority, and ball bearings as the second. These latter were crucial anti-friction bearings used not just in aircraft – although German aircraft factories alone needed more than two million a month – but also in tanks, vehicles, guns and other equipment. Ball bearings were therefore a vital resource and, as the COA pointed out, their manufacture was particularly suited to a knock-out blow because production was largely limited to six cities and because almost half of all German production was based at one single factory in Schweinfurt. There was no doubt that if the ball-bearing plant there could be destroyed completely, the German war effort would take a massive blow.
The Eighth had first hit Schweinfurt on 17 August with 315 heavy bombers in a joint attack that also targeted the Messerschmitt plant at Regensburg. This was one of the first big tests of the Eighth Air Force and the American pre-war belief that a B-17’s robust construction and heavy armament of thirteen .50-calibre machine guns would be enough, when they flew in close formation, to see off any attacks by enemy fighters. Operations thus far had shown that it was far better to have fighters escort the bomber force, but Schweinfurt was well beyond the range of fighter cover and so it was accepted that on this occasion the heavies would have to fend for themselves. But those pre-war beliefs had been badly tested that day, as a slaughter had unfurled. A staggering sixty bombers – 19 per cent of the attacking force – had been shot down, thirty-six of them from the force targeting Schweinfurt. The attack on Regensburg had been accurate and had caused considerable damage, but nothing like as much as Major-General Fred Anderson, the commander of the Eighth’s VIII Bomber Command, had claimed that day. In his diary he had noted that his bombers had destroyed the capacity of the Regensburg factories to build 2,400 Me109s a year.1 This, he wrote, meant there would be no need to repeat the attack. In fact, nearly 300 tons of bombs of varying weight and size had hit the plant, destroying a number of newly built aircraft, killing 400 and causing widespread damage. However, the large assembly shop, the most important building of all, had not been hit, and the majority of the all-important machine tools were undamaged. The reality was that aircraft production was barely affected at all.
The bombing of the Kugel-Fischer ball-bearing plant at Schweinfurt had been even less successful. Luftwaffe fighters had badly mauled the attacking force before they even reached the city, but the navigators of those that did had struggled to spot the target because it had been hidden by fog generators. Just 424 tons were dropped, of which only 35 tons of high explosives and 6 tons of incendiaries actually struck the ball-bearing works; the rest mostly landed on residential areas. Production was reduced by 34 per cent for a short while, but there was enough spare capacity and the damage was quickly righted.
Aircrews had also made claims that amounted to 228 enemy fighter planes shot down on the raid, which would have been a notable aerial victory. In the confusion and the melee of swirling fighters, over-claiming was both inevitable and understandable, but in truth Luftwaffe pilot casualties had been just seventeen dead and fourteen wounded, around a tenth of what had been claimed.
In other words, the results had not matched the effort and cost, especially since the aim had been to stop production altogether for between three and six months. Not only had the Eighth lost 60 bombers and 600 aircrew, but a further 11 bombers had later been scrapped and 164 were damaged, some badly so. In all, a third of the total attacking force had had to be written off. It had been a crushing blow, to put it mildly, and called into question whether daylight precision bombing, as strenuously advocated by America’s air chiefs, could be either precise enough or even sustainable without finding some better way to protect the bombers all the way to the target.
Both Lieutenant-General Ira Eaker, who in December 1942 had taken over from Spaatz as commander of the Eighth, and Major-General Anderson had gradually learned from a combination of photo-reconnaissance and other intelligence sources – not least decrypts of German Enigma code traffic – that the Schweinfurt–Regensburg raid had fallen some way short of their initial aims. Both had accepted that before very long they would have to send their boys back into the heart of Germany. The trouble was, the horrific losses had set them back. The Eighth Air Force was still growing, but first of all had to make good the losses of Schweinfurt–Regensburg, then build up strength even further. Nor had the weather helped; it had not been good in the late summer of 1943. Together, these concerns meant that not until early October had the Eighth felt ready to have another crack at enemy targets beyond fighter range.
Once again, the aircraft industry was the prime target: the Arado works at Anklam on the Baltic coast, the Focke-Wulf plant at Marienburg, as well as Münster and Bremen. Finally, this Thursday, 14 October 1943, it was the turn of Schweinfurt once again. Mission Number 115. Brigadier-General Curtis LeMay, commander of VIII Bomber Command’s 3rd Division, had rung Colonel Neil ‘Chick’ Harding, commander of the 100th BG, and suggested they could sit this one out after the mauling they had suffered in the past week, but Harding had replied, ‘The Hundredth go off ops? Never!’2 So the Hundredth would be flying again.
Among those from the group due to be flying that day were the crew of Nine Little Yanks and a Jerk, captained by Lieutenant Bob Hughes, a 25-year-old from Bryant in Washington State. Mission 115 that day was to be Hughes’s tenth, but the briefing early that morning was unlike anything he and his navigator, Lieutenant Len Wickens, had yet experienced. Normally, the briefing room would be crammed before a mission, but as the curtain went back to reveal the map and a route to Schweinfurt, there were officers from just eight crews. As was then revealed, a number of those crews were to have key positions filled by the loan of personnel from other units. Nor would they be flying all together as a bomb group. Rather, the eight were to be split into two flights, one of which would fly the mission attached to the 390th BG, and a second, led by Hughes, which would accompany the 95th.
From the briefing, they went the short distance over to the mess hall for breakfast: dried eggs, Spam, coffee, toast, English marmalade and what Hughes called ‘wonderful English dark bread’.3 It had been an eventful few months for Hughes. He had joined up the previous year, been selected for pilot training and had finally passed out with his wings from Class 43-B at La Junta in Colorado. From there he had been posted to Walla Walla back in his home state of Washington, where he had joined the ‘Saunders Provisional Group’, which was made up from twenty-five rookie crews. A key part of daylight bombing was formation flying, because it was believed that only by sticking together in close formation would crews be able to bring the full weight of fire to bear. With thirteen heavy .50-calibre machine guns per aircraft, twenty Fortresses, for example, multiplied to an impressive 260 machine guns. Yet flying and fighting together required practice and coordination, so, along with a number of other rookie crews, they had carried out Secondary Phase Training together from Walla Walla, which had involved plenty of navigational practice, formation work and also gunnery. Final Phase Training had taken place across the state border at Redmond, Oregon, and then they had all flown on to Grand Island, Nebraska, for staging to England.
At this point it had not been clear to Hughes and his fellows whether the Saunders Provisional Group would remain together as a new bomb group or whether they would arrive in the UK and then be posted to other groups already there. It says much, though, about the exponential growth of the US Armed Forces that entire regiments in the army, as well as bomber and fighter groups, were being formed and were training together from scratch. The United States Army Air Corps – as it had been when Germany had invaded Poland in September 1939 – had had just seventy-four fighter planes and even fewer modern bombers. Now, America was producing barely comprehensible numbers of aircraft: in 1942, just under forty-eight thousand had emerged from new American factories. That figure had already been surpassed in the first nine months of 1943.
As a first lieutenant who was slightly older than many of his fellows, Hughes had earlier been appointed personnel officer to the Saunders Provisional Group. On 23 June, Colonel Saunders had mustered his charges together. The colonel would not be making the trip across the Atlantic; rather, his task was to train up yet more new crews. However, someone needed to be nominally in charge of the group as they headed to England, and Saunders had appointed Hughes. He and the crew of the already christened Nine Little Yanks and a Jerk would be leading the way.
The next day, they had flown to Bangor, Maine, and carried out some further training to study long-range cruise control – vital before flying across the Atlantic. There, a further nine B-24 Liberators had been added to the Provisional Group and then it was finally time to make the epic trip across the Atlantic, staging at various airfields along the way, from Nova Scotia to Iceland, before finally touching down at Prestwick in Scotland. All thirty-four had arrived safely, although as Hughes had made his approach, Joe Boyle, his radio operator, forgot to pull in the trailing radio antenna, which then caused a bit of damage as it whipped over the trees and hedgerows at the end of the airfield. ‘Now we thought we knew who was the “jerk” on the crew,’ noted Hughes in his diary.4 He had handed over command, and then the crews promptly had their new bombers taken from them and were all packed off to Combat Training School. Two weeks later, Hughes and his crew were assigned to the 351st Bomb Squadron of the 100th Bomb Group.
Although crews would be kept together through a tour of twenty-five missions, each member was first given a taste of a combat mission as part of a more experienced crew. Hughes, for example, had flown his first official mission on 25 July as the co-pilot to Lieutenant Tom Murphy and the crew of Piccadilly Lily. It had been to hit the U-boat pens in Kiel in northern Germany and had certainly been no easy milk run. By the time they landed again, Piccadilly Lily had twenty-seven holes in it. Two more trips with Murphy’s crew had followed in quick succession. During a mission to Hanover, they had had the right elevator shot off and an incredible 168 holes drilled through the plane in an attack by an Me210, and next they had been attacked by German fighters during a mission to Oschersleben. Finally, the crew of Nine Little Yanks and a Jerk had all flown together for the first time on 15 August, and this time it had been a milk run to Merville in northern France.
Since then, Hughes had notched up another five trips, including the Regensburg mission, which he had again carried out as co-pilot on Murphy’s crew. That had been his last trip with Piccadilly Lily. Murphy and all his crew had been lost on 8 October, along with five other crews from the Hundredth that day. A further crew had managed to bail out and were now prisoners of war.
On this Thursday, 14 October, Hughes was about to fly his tenth official mission, although only his fifth with his crew on Nine Little Yanks and a Jerk. And as was all too evident from the rows of empty beds and the ghostly atmosphere in the mess hall and briefing room, and from the sight of far too many battle-scarred Fortresses, Hughes had done pretty well to survive as long as he had. Now, he and his crew were to fly to Schweinfurt, scene of a slaughter just two months earlier.
General Fred Anderson had sent the order to bomb Schweinfurt just after 11 p.m. the previous evening. ‘This air operation today is the most important air operation yet conducted in this war,’ he wrote on his orders.5 ‘The target must be destroyed. It is of vital importance to the enemy. Your friends and comrades that have been lost and that will be lost today are depending on you. Their sacrifice must not be in vain. Good luck. Good shooting and good bombing.’
Around 90 miles further west of Thorpe Abbotts, at Podington, near Wellingborough, the crews of the 92nd Bomb Group were also learning what the day’s target was with a mixture of incredulity and dread. The 92nd had been among the first to join the Eighth Air Force. They had reached England the previous summer and had taken part in several early missions that September. From then until May, the 92nd had built up strength, absorbing and training up new crews and getting ready to go back into combat.
Among those originals who had flown to England the previous year was Lieutenant J. Kemp McLaughlin. Now twenty-four years old and from Braxton County in West Virginia, McLaughlin and his crew had not been sent to North Africa, but instead they and the rest of the 407th Bomb Squadron had been instructed to help set up the 1/11th Combat Crew Replacement Center. This had been established by General Ira Eaker to help newly arrived aircrew orientate themselves around the UK, as well as learn about escape and air-sea rescue, and escape and evasion procedures, flying near barrage balloons and in poor weather. It was a good idea, but while McLaughlin had been singled out to become an instructor pilot, he was also asked to fly a number of VIP flights to Gibraltar, then on to North Africa and back again. Not until May 1943 did he finally rejoin his original bomb group.
Then, in early July, McLaughlin had been transferred from the 407th Bomb Squadron to the 326th, where he had been given an entirely new crew, a new Fortress – swiftly named Fame’s Favored Few – and been made a flight leader. He and his crew had been one of the leading bombers for the first attack on Schweinfurt and had had a comparatively easy time of it, but now, on the morning of 14 October, McLaughlin was in no doubt about what lay in store. ‘We all knew that we’d be going back to this target,’ he noted, ‘and each of us hoped he’d not be selected for that raid.6 No such luck.’
In fact, McLaughlin and his fellow officers on Fame’s Favored Few had been put on alert the previous day. What the target would be was never revealed until the morning of the mission, but there was a clue to be had from a visit to the base we